Again, the call comes to build a house. A place, sacred and set aside and hidden in plain sight as just another place in town with tall dandelions and siding in need of paint. But with purity, the undeniable draw of holiness and life and salvation.
Build a house for me, where I may dwell.
Dwell means to reside, to live. To be a resident. It implies permanency, consistency. It’s where I can find you. Where I will send my letters. Where we can meet and talk and have bonfires and movie nights and plant gardens and cry and laugh and make memories. Dwell. Abide. Be forever found.
It is not transitional. It is not for visiting. It is not an emergency shelter. It is not a last resort. It is a place never to be left. Never to be turned into something we desire, or corrupted, or made in our image. It’s not even a place we can understand.
I can’t work here [church building]. People come for themselves. This is not my house. You come to visit, not to remain.
All will be drawn to this Truth [new thing I am about to do, this Truth in action]. They will not come to fall asleep basking in the warm glow of my grace.
I want to DWELL among you.
Not to be dragged in for a little taste, a sample, a handful.
I am a tidal wave.
Here you stand on my shores. The tide has been drawn unnaturally out in anticipation, it is the time between the nearly imperceptible quake far offshore and the great heaving unstoppable force of water about to come.
And you hold a Dixie cup.
That’s all you know.
(What do I know of holy? What does a goldfish know of the sea? It’s wet, right? Like the bowl. It sloshes, too. I know what life in this bowl is like, so the ocean can’t be that much different. I’ve read about it. I think I’ve got it.)
Build my house and I will
dwell
abide
spring up like an unending bubbling spring of life
among you.
_______________________________
“Let me give you an example in marriage”. I kept hearing that. A quick search hasn’t found that in the Bible, but I swear Paul wrote that in one of his letters. I keep hearing it, over and over.
One of the expanded Hebrew definitions of “dwell” in the Bible implies the way married people live together. This is what God is pointing to.
Let me show you, what happens when you don’t dwell in me. It is like a broken marriage, one that looks okay from afar, but the two hearts are just existing together. Strangers under the same roof, with nothing tying their hearts to each other but duty and tradition and routine.
“These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
Their teachings are rules taught by man…
And he [Jesus] said to them, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions.” (Mark 7:6,7, 9 and quoting Isaiah 29:13)
We don’t live together. My church and I are not found together.
Again, God is pointing, pushing, urging me toward a house. A dwelling. To reside. To build this place for him. I will build it in my heart, and I will build it for Inwood, for NW Iowa. This city on a hill must first be built in our hearts before it can ever be built with concrete and mud and tape and paint.
It’s been said before, it’s a classic illustration. If you interacted – not just spoke (this is prayer but so much more than prayer) – with your spouse or close friends the way you do with with God, what would that look like?
(Really. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you, and be prepared to hear.)
If your marriage was like a Sunday morning and casual-during-the-week relationship with God, what would it look like?
This is not about praying more. This is not about serving more. This is not about having more faith or more Bible study or going to church more or doing the right thing more. (We were never told to go to church. We were told to be the church.) This is somewhat about sanctification, of cleaning house, of humbling, casting off sin. Sort of about cleaning your garage and seeing what you spend your time and energy and affection on. I can not look into your life and tell you what you need to start doing or stop doing. I sure can suggest some things, though.
Seek first his kingdom.
If you do not fully, wholly, submissively, with reckless and foolish abandon enter into a relationship with our living God and do everything in your limited but his unlimited power to continue to dwell in that, then I am afraid all is lost.
One thing I ask of the Lord,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to seek him at his temple.
For in the day of trouble
he will keep me safe in his dwelling;
he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle
and set me high upon a rock. (Psalm 27: 4-5)
How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord Almighty.
My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God.
Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
they are ever praising you.
They go from strength to strength… (Psalm 84)
Threads of a Remnant 